Despite plenty of recent archaeological and paleographical discoveries, ancient Mayan history and culture remain by and large great unknowns—a reality that forces even careful, reputable writers like Mann, author of the brilliant Brooklyn Bridge (1996) and other studies of great monuments, into generalizations and speculation. Here, she sketchily traces the 1,700-year career of a sprawling, strategically placed commercial center that apparently enjoyed centuries of prosperity until falling to an alliance of rivals, then rose again under a series of kings, of which little beyond major building projects and exotic-sounding names seems to be known, before suddenly, for no evident reason, being abandoned around 900 CE. For the illustrations, color photos of elaborately ornamented Mayan art, capped by a striking aerial view of Tikal’s pyramid-strewn Great Plaza today, are interspersed with sometimes uncaptioned painted scenes featuring generic figures laboring, shedding each other’s blood, or standing about to give the city’s magnificent buildings scale. Young readers will certainly come away with an appreciation for Tikal’s ruined splendors, but the art and narrative combine to communicate even more clearly a sense of how little we really know about this complex civilization. Still, a reading list would have been nice, especially considering the pace of new discoveries, and the availability of such engaging related titles as Laurie Coulter’s Secrets in Stone: All About Maya Hieroglyphs (2001). (map, timeline, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-931414-05-X
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Firefly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2002
In glossy textbook style, this latest entry in The Other Half of History series (Women of Ancient Greece, p. 1746, etc.) illuminates the days and lives of wealthy, middle-class, and poor women who lived thousands of years ago in Egypt. The large-scale format of the book allows elaborate full-color photographs to appear on every page, often accompanied by sidebars with brief quotations from ancient Egyptian writers. These provide the book’s main source of interest; Macdonald resorts to a textbook writing style, with deliberately short, declarative sentences that make the material sound more somber than it is. Nevertheless, this book provides a useful tracing of the role of women in history, and would be a good companion reference to Eloise Jarvis McGraw’s classic Mara, Daughter of the Nile (1953) or Sonia Levitin’s Escape from Egypt (1994). (maps, glossary, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: Nov. 30, 1999
ISBN: 0-87226-567-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A warm tribute to the WPA-funded “book women” (and men) who rode Kentucky’s backwoods in the 1930s and early ’40s, delivering library service to some of this country’s most impoverished citizens. Gathering information from archives, hard-to-find published sources, and interviews, the authors write feelingly of the Pack Horse Library Program’s origins and the obstacles its dedicated employees overcame. These ranged from the chronic scarcity of books and magazines (nearly all of which were donated) to the rigors of riding, generally alone, over rugged terrain in all weathers. Those rigors are made more immediate by a reconstructed account of a rider’s day: rising at 4:30, stopping at isolated hamlets, cabins, and one-room schools to drop off materials and, sometimes, to read aloud, then plodding wearily home through darkness and drizzle. Supported by a generous array of contemporary photos and sturdy lists of sources and Web sites to give interested readers a leg up on further inquiry, this adds unique insights not just to the history of library service, but of Appalachian culture, and of women’s work in general. (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: May 31, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-029135-4
Page Count: 64
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
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